Dad Hears My Thoughts novel · Chapter 26 of 32

Chapter 26: The Queen's Birthday

"Lamp first," I said.

The man in the fur coat held it up.

I reached into my bodice, past two folded papers, and took out the Sun Diamond.

In the dim gallery it looked like a coal someone had blown on.

The foreign man took it from my fingers without asking.

He turned it under the lamp. Then he set the edge of his steel file against its girdle and drew.

The file skated off it.

He grunted, and spoke to Ralph in his own tongue.

Ralph didn't need it translated.

He took the stone out of the man's palm with his left hand, the ring hand, and closed his fist on it.

He held the fist against his chest for a moment with his eyes shut.

I'd seen men hold a woman that way. Never a stone.

"A month," he said softly. "A month I've dreamed about this."

"My crowns, my lord."

He opened his eyes and laughed.

He took a purse out of his coat, long and fat and heavy, and dropped it into my hands. It nearly pulled my arms down.

Then a folded parchment with the Harcourt seal.

I unfolded it. A charter for the shop of Hawtrey, Cutter, signed in a big curling hand.

Ralph Harcourt, heir of Harcourt.

"And the charge?" I said.

"The captain tears it up at dawn. When all this is over."

He smiled. "You'll forgive me for not trusting a cutter's word all the way."

"The paper," he said. "Now."

I took the copy out of my bodice and gave it to him.

He unfolded it under the lamp and read it with his head on one side.

Then he laughed again, quietly, the way he'd laughed at the hearing.

"R," he said. "That's all she had. A month of my life chasing one frightened letter."

He held the corner of it to the candle in the window alcove.

It caught. He turned it in his fingers until the flame reached his glove.

Then he dropped it and ground the black curl into the floor with his heel.

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